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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997736">Unbecoming Pandora</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/pseuds/Elsin'>Elsin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Revolutionary Arc - kitsunerei88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Character Study, Gen, Identity Issues, Revolutionary Arc, Rigelverse, fanfic of a fanfic of a fanfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:34:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,326</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997736</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/pseuds/Elsin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Pansy has a mask to unravel.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Rigel Black Exchange Round 1, Rigel Black Universe</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Unbecoming Pandora</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveExcitement/gifts">graveExcitement</a>.</li>


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23122846">Cataclysm</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88">kitsunerei88</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is divergent post-Cataclysm 2, and as such, has an alternative explanation for what's going on with Pansy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The war ends on a warm Tuesday evening in mid-June, 1998.  It’s almost as explosive as the night the war began, though this fight is more predictable, and its conclusion more foregone.  They’ve been losing this war for months now, since they lost Malfoy Manor back in March.</p>
<p>When the Free British Army bursts into the inner sanctum, Pandora Parkinson knows that Voldemort has fallen, and she surrenders at once.  The fighters look at her with undisguised suspicion—while Pandora has chiefly been a political guide these past two years, she’s had to duel, too, and could certainly have taken some of them out with her.</p>
<p>But she doesn’t.  She surrenders and hands over her wand and lets them put her in cuffs that dampen her magic before they lead her away.</p>
<p>Bellatrix went down fighting, she notes with disdain; then again, she’d have expected no less.  The woman was mad with power and lust, and she wouldn’t have known the meaning of surrender if it smacked her in the face.</p>
<p>With twenty-three dead at her wand and many more from her machinations, Pandora Parkinson is arrested in Little Hangleton at the age of eighteen, a snake tattooed on her forearm in a vivid green that will never fully fade.</p>
<p>She only speaks once: she asks to see Aldon Rosier.</p>
<p>They take her away after that and put her in a cell with some of her erstwhile colleagues; Pandora doesn’t talk to them, and they don’t talk to her.  They’ve never liked each other, and they all know that they’re more likely to be convicted than not.</p>
<p>In the early afternoon, Aldon arrives, dressed sharply in muggle clothing with his gun easily visible.  Pandora doesn’t <em> like </em>guns; she never did, and she likes them still less now that she knows what it feels like to get shot.  But this is Aldon, and the war is over; he’s not going to shoot her.</p>
<p>“Come on,” he says to her.  “We’re leaving.”</p>
<p>“Where are we going?” she asks him once they’re out in the open.  They didn’t give her back her wand; Aldon has it, she thinks.</p>
<p>“Rosier Place,” says Aldon.  “You’re under house arrest, by the way, and you’re not allowed a wand at the moment.  Just so you know.”</p>
<p>Pandora shrugs delicately.  “I’d expect nothing less.  I <em> am </em> a war criminal, after all.”</p>
<p>Aldon winces at that.  “Just hold on.”</p>
<p>She does.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Rosier Place is nice, as are the rooms Aldon gives her.  All around her she can see that this place became a fortress; most of those fortifications remain.  And that makes sense—it's Thursday.  The war ended two days ago.</p>
<p>There are people around her, unless she retreats to her rooms.  None of them look on her kindly; over the next few days she keeps to herself, to her rooms or to the grounds.  The trials will start soon, and Pandora knows she must unravel herself before that, but she doesn’t dare.</p>
<p>She is Pandora Parkinson, Voldemort’s chief political advisor and the girl who killed Lucius Malfoy and who tried to make a better world for herself without any care for others.  She is Pansy Parkinson, Aldon’s highest spy in Voldemort’s ranks, who made a terrible decision in a terrible moment and tried to undo the cause she claimed to support.  She is Pansy Parkinson, former best friend of Rigel Black who is Harriett Potter, former fiancée of Draco Malfoy.  She is all of these, and she doesn’t dare unravel Pandora to find the girl who lies beneath.</p>
<p>She doesn’t know what she’ll find; and she doesn’t know if, once she takes Pandora apart, whether she’ll ever become her again.  Maybe she’ll have to, if they don’t catch all of Voldemort’s people soon enough.</p>
<p>Her fingers trace over her Dark Mark, looping around and around; it doesn’t end.  She sits looking out of the window and traces her Dark Mark and tries not to think.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Aldon finds her on the grounds on Saturday, out in the sculpture garden.</p>
<p>“I’ve hated that statue for years now,” he says conversationally, nodding to a statue of an old wizard.  “I decided I’d replace it the night I became Lord Rosier.”</p>
<p>“You’ve got the time for it now.”</p>
<p>He laughs, a little startled, like he hadn’t considered that before.  “I suppose I do.”</p>
<p>They stand for a moment longer before Pandora speaks.  “Do you need me anymore?  For anything?”</p>
<p>“Information, if you can give it up.  Any kind of information—but I’m not sending you back there, if that’s what you’re talking about.”</p>
<p>Pandora nods slightly.  “I don’t know what I’m going to be.  Who I’m going to be, now that this is all over.”</p>
<p>Aldon laughs again, bright and sharp.  “Who <em> does </em>, anyway?  I sure as hell don’t.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>On Sunday morning, there’s a knock on the door to her suite, and Pandora stiffens.  No one’s met her here besides Aldon and the house-elves, and the house-elves don’t knock and Aldon’s sounds different than this.  And Pandora has no way to defend herself.</p>
<p>“Come in,” she calls, just loud enough that whoever it is ought to hear her.</p>
<p>The door swings open, and <strike>Pansy</strike> Pandora's stomach turns over.</p>
<p>Standing in the doorway, brightly illuminated by the midmorning sun streaming through the windows, is Harriett Potter.</p>
<p>The last time Pandora saw Harriett Potter was on the battlefield.  Before that, the last time she saw the other girl was through the orb, tied to a gravestone as Voldemort was brought into the flesh.  Before that—</p>
<p>Well.  Before that, she was Rigel Black, one of Pansy's two best friends.  Back when they were children, and the world was simpler.</p>
<p>“Hey,” says Harry.  “I heard—Aldon told me what you were doing, all that time.”</p>
<p>“You can come in,” says Pandora.  Harry steps into her rooms and closes the door.</p>
<p>“This is nice,” she says.  She pauses, visibly hesitating over what she wants to say.  Pandora is about to tell her to just <em> say </em> it already when she finally gets over herself and starts to speak.  “Maybe I’m the last person who should be giving this as advice,” says Harry.  “But you should probably take off that mask you’re wearing, if you do want it to come off.”</p>
<p>Pandora laughs.  “You’re one to talk.”  She shakes her head.  “It’s<em>—I </em>did all those things.  No matter what I call myself.  And I don’t know what to do with that.”</p>
<p>“Well, I can’t say I know what it’s like to kill for a cause that I don’t fully believe in,” says Harry carefully.  She crosses the room and sits on the floor, leaning against a bookcase.  Her hair has grown out quite a lot; half of it is braided with the rest escaping.  “But I do know what it is to stand in public, the <em> perfect pureblood poster boy</em>, and be the face of all the laws that actively made my life worse, and I couldn’t say a damn thing—couldn’t risk anyone getting too angry, or looking too close.  And it sucks.  So, you know.  You can try to unravel it, if you want.  I can stay; or I can go.  Just say the word.”</p>
<p>“Stay,” says Pandora.  “Please.”  She doesn’t know if she’ll have the strength to see it through otherwise.</p>
<p>“All right, then,” says Harry, like it’s just that simple.  Maybe, for her, it is.  “I’ll stay.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It takes Pandora seven hours to unravel herself, seven hours to untangle the worldview she’s been steeping in for the past two years.  Had she not had to do the very same thing to contact Aldon, time and time again, she knows not whether she could have done it at all.</p>
<p>It takes seven hours, and through it all Harry sits there with her, sometimes meditating, sometimes reading, but always, always there.</p>
<p>Pansy Parkinson sits in the chair by the window, shadows deepening in the late afternoon, and lets herself begin to cry.</p>
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